[10M Disc] Healing advice needed post 5.2

Hey there guys, I did a quick once over the forums looking for a similar topic but didn't see one so please direct me there if it does exist.

On to the point:

Disc has obviously received some changes, and it was noticeable to us in our raid group last night as we progressed through the first 4 bosses in ToT. Our solid priest was having a little difficulty adapting on the fly so I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice to pass along.

I'm curious about the following post 5.2 in a 10m setting:

1. Spell selection
2. Optimizing HPS
3. Atonement and how much do you use it
4. Cooldown management with the changes to spirit shell
5. Any other advice or pointers on your personal experience

Any contributions would be great guys, you don't need to be raiding ToT to contribute or anything like that. I guess I'm most curious about what has changed for you personally between 5.1 disc healing and 5.2.

1. No need to change other than sniping 1 or 2 shields out there instead of PoH-spamming
2. Well, that's specific to the encounters, so I don't know yet
3. I use it instead of pre-shielding now because of mana issues, so a lot more than before
4. No changes
5. I don't feel that much has changed besides pre-shielding being luck-based now because of crit

It is pretty much the same. Major difference is anytime you would DA spam to prevent some damage you have to instead optionally PW:S a few key targets (squishies like yourself, shamans, etc.) and then use AA + new mastery to get some decent after healing. Attonement is a bit stronger with Penance being buffed, makes Penance of the boss a really decent filler AoE heal if needed.

As far as optimizing HPS, hard to say. it varies fight to fight, but I think the big difference with Disc is now it requires a much more stringent knowledge of the fight. Used to be able to just kinda pop AA and SS on CD and fill it with DA spam from PoH to be good while managing Rapture for infinite mana (not saying your Priest did that). Now, since we cannot really A. sustain PoH spam and B. it isn't OP without DA, you need to me more calculated. Still should Rapture on CD (still nets mana), can't afford to Spirit Shell on CD, watch for those big AoE's timers. I've been trying to avoid paring AA with Spirit shell unless I need it. Since most of the time I'm able to get a full 15 seconds to spam Spirit Shell on the raid, I really don't need the extra throughout and would rather have it to help recover later on (i.e. Tortus).

Any information you can help give would be useful. Was your Priest falling significantly behind your other healers or on par? For me, I was only Disc for Council and Tortus. Council I was about 10k HPS ahead of other healers and Tortus I was 40k HPS ahead (that fight was like made for Disc, hello HoF style mechanics =D) Was Rapture management good? Must more important to get consistant Raptures as you cannot catch back up like you could before (Spirit Trinket + Mana Tide = 150+k Mana, I miss you T_T)

He was trying a few things out so he was bouncing all over the place. On horridon kill i believe he actually outhealed me, but on some pulls he was even with our blood dk. that's a lot of good info and i really appreciate it.

Yea I went pretty much all mastery, I think there's a couple pieces I could squeeze more mastery out of. However I am unsure if I want to stay mastery heavy. I did the first 4 bosses last night and 3 of those have damage increase buffs so atonement is pretty nice. Our holy pally outhealed me on every fight except Tortos, which is an awesome fight for discipline. Me and our MW monk pretty much tied on most of the fights, but he was doing a lot of fistweaving or whatever it is.

I didn't change how I played Disc that much other than using more shields. PW:S was usually in my top 3 heals/absorbs. You cannot rely on SS quite as much, it's definitely still a great CD but mine was absorbing about 70k less on each person when I used it on Tortos, compared to 5.1 when I used it before big raid damage abilities.

I kept my spec the same, where I take Cascade, PI and Mindbender. I didn't try the new Solace out yet but I probably will later this week. I tried that new Weakened Soul glyph but I don't think it was that helpful, except maybe on the tanks. I'll probably try that new Binding Heal glyph or go back to PoM glyph.

I haven't raided yet but I remember people talking about the binding heal changes, particularly glyphed, being better than PoH on PTR previously. Has anyone tried this out on live and seen if it's worth using binding heal over PoH?

PoH was so efficient before 5.2 that I can't even remember the last time I used binding heal.

Binging Heal with the glyph costs ~22k mana, I don't see it being viable for many, if any at all, fights. I don't agree with the 1-2 shield part. I still play more or less the same way, except I get more spirit than I did ( I suspect that with gear I will end up dropping it again) and just throwing PW:S around like crazy lol. Absorbs do go into overhealing if they expire but they have less chance of over healing because of the duration they stay on. The previously nearly useless talent Divine Insight is now looking really attractive now, I only used it for a few attempts but I think I will end up keeping it.

PWS spam is fairly low HPS. There is a strong discrepancy between in game meters and and WoL in terms of absorbs right now, so I am not sure which is more trustworthy, but casting a string of PWS before bursts does not really achieve anything.

Cleared 6/12 in a few hours last night, felt really weird at first. Ended up just spamming atonement (40%+ of my heals on every fight) and PW:S most of the time. Cascade and PoM every now and then to keep the raid up. Spirit shelled a few times when I thought damage was coming but it felt like it got stripped off instantly where as before it lasted a long time, guess it needs a lot more casts now to stack it to cap. PoH felt like utter shit without inner focus, will have to test more.

My usual breakdown is something like 35% atonement, 15% spirit shell, 15% PW:S, and more or less 5% of PoM, PoH, cascade and shit.

Which translates basically in atonement as much as you can, spirit shell the big ability you can find on the boss (electric storm on jinrok, sandstorm on council, rampage on megaera,...) throw in some shields after the spirit shell, and some in between PoHs, and various instants and offensive penance to maximize use of Borrowed Time during incoming aoe damage, and that's about it.
Not a lot of change really except atonement is even better than before and you can't mindlessly spam PoH all day long and top the meter.

You think PoH is mindless but atonement isn't? I see logs with up to 60% healing from atonement and a lot of HPS in 10s. How is that better than PoH spam. I tunnel the boss and play like a DPS 80% of the time and that is not mindless healing?

I am also really curious about whether blizzard will add damage modifiers again on HC bosses to keep atonement strong, but as curious as I am to see what will happen if they don't.

Atonement got a bigger buff than just the 20% Penance buff. The new mastery also affects it, which (for me) is around 15% more healing on it, on top of the Penance buff. This means that atonement is generally what I use as my filler healing, and is now even better on fights with large damage increases than it was before.

As for the rest, preshielding with SS is still pretty good since they made it take the average heal so it's a realiable amount. It's not easy to cap it like it used to be, but it's certainly not bad.

For me, pretty much nothing really changed in how I play. I've always tended towards atonement for healing when I'm not using SS, keeping up the people on particularly low health and throwing out a shield on tanks or someone who will be taking a predictably big hit.

For atonment: This now should be your big filler spell if you weren't already using it as such.

It dips into so many +healing factors, and dispite the crit change it's average heal is still higher then in 5.1. Most of my fights atonment is either very high on the list, or top on some fights depending on what I am doing.

As far as stat weights are concerned, many sites are saying Haste>Crit if you can keep your mana up. Others are saying Crit>Haste, both while taking spirit where you can. Many players are still sticking with Heavy Mastery. Then there's a small rumor about just nomming up all the Crit/Haste gear, dropping most of your spirit and just Dps'ing through Atonement and only switching to your healing spells during high damage phases (Quills). I pray this is not the case. First CoH spam (Holy), then Shield spam, then PoH spam, and if Atonement spam becomes the new meta...I say Blizzard should just break down the barrier of Disc and Holy. If Druids can have 4 classes, then I see no problem with Priests having 2. I think healing priests would be in a much better place if Blizzard wasn't always trying to make Disc and Holy feel so different from one another. Cut out some filler, mesh the two specs, nerf and buff where needed, I believe we would be much closer to the other healers who have Blizz's healing attention focused on just one spec of every given class (By this I don't mean in terms of just number. It's more a combined effort of Mana Regen, Throughput, Rotation, and the general flow of the class). I'm tired of this balancing act...Holy has all the rotation and complexity (as far as healing priests go), but none of the fun spells, playstyle, and arguably the mana regen; and Disc always turns into a Spam bot by the 2nd half of the expansion only to receive a nerf to said spam, a buff to compensate and that buff ultimately becoming the new spam.